Author Topic: Noteworthy Hamidon Raids - Did Yours Make History? (Help complete the wiki!)  (Read 24271 times)

LadyVamp

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I guess the best raid I ever joined was one where we had one of the defenders who happen to have taunt hold hami's agro.  A stone  tank stood by to take over if needed which he did during the part where the purple blob was being attacked.  The def help the agro otherwise just fine.  SuziePalmer was that defenders name, and she was an emp/something no less.  I think it blew everyone's mind watching that but with a group of emps behind her keeping the regen buffs going, she did it.

Even today I look back at that and think wow!
No Surrender!

MaidMercury

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Just surviving and completing a Hamidon Raid was in itself a nice feat.
Team work and focus...

Little David

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Hnnnrrrrrgh. One of the things I wish I could have done but didn't get to do before time ran out.

... Will it count as history-making if/when CoH is revived, I participate in one of the first Hamidon raids with my SS/Stone Tanker, Hamikini?

Ironwolf

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I was in on the first Server-wide Hamidon raid on Champion. We had never taken it down and we spent days and weeks testing how it worked. I know our teams job - SG Sin - was to clear all the monster spawns. You see a few idiots decided it was fun to grief the attempt by herding monsters onto the healing blanket.

Yes, that was the wonderful Strykeforce SG doing the griefing.

They also griefed the reward part by grabbing as many HO drops as possible. This raid was the reason for the selection menu happening as having over 100 people never get a reward for the attempt - was beyond annoying. The griefing potential was terrible back in the day.


Ankhammon

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I guess the best raid I ever joined was one where we had one of the defenders who happen to have taunt hold hami's agro.  A stone  tank stood by to take over if needed which he did during the part where the purple blob was being attacked.  The def help the agro otherwise just fine.  SuziePalmer was that defenders name, and she was an emp/something no less.  I think it blew everyone's mind watching that but with a group of emps behind her keeping the regen buffs going, she did it.

Even today I look back at that and think wow!

Color me impressed. I remember getting one shot by Hami several times.

I was even told that it took tanker level HP to survive a single shot by him. I was never on the taunt team so I wouldn't have known if this was true.
Cogito, Ergo... eh?

LadyVamp

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Color me impressed. I remember getting one shot by Hami several times.

I was even told that it took tanker level HP to survive a single shot by him. I was never on the taunt team so I wouldn't have known if this was true.

The key was to have a 2 to 3 emps with regeneration aura.  If you could get a kin def or a kin troller to sb the emps, that helped a lot.  They would have to apply it at like 45 second intervals which it why it took at least 2.  I did it quite a few times using my emp/rad def.  Takes effort but with that even a lvl 10 tank with taunt and no enhancements of any kind could hold the agro and not be 1 shotted.  Adrenaline boost was helpful but not necessary for the tank.  Fortitude wasn't necessary but helpful also.
No Surrender!

Ankhammon

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The key was to have a 2 to 3 emps with regeneration aura.  If you could get a kin def or a kin troller to sb the emps, that helped a lot.  They would have to apply it at like 45 second intervals which it why it took at least 2.  I did it quite a few times using my emp/rad def.  Takes effort but with that even a lvl 10 tank with taunt and no enhancements of any kind could hold the agro and not be 1 shotted.  Adrenaline boost was helpful but not necessary for the tank.  Fortitude wasn't necessary but helpful also.

Ah, so this was one shot to 1 HP and regen/heal before the next shot. Nice strategy.

Cogito, Ergo... eh?

LadyVamp

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Ah, so this was one shot to 1 HP and regen/heal before the next shot. Nice strategy.

Not quite.  Heals don't work with hami's debuffs.  Your only hope is to get the regen to the cap and keep it there.  At the cap, even a blaster had a shot at surviving an attack by hami. Also, stay out of the splash range around the tank. 

When I was doing the tanking on my wp/ss tank, I'd sometime have to help the yellow agro team by holding yellow orb # 5 and 6 as well as the purple blob's agro.  It's possible but not easy.  You have to have 2 or more amazing healers keeping the regen buffs up plus a kin keeping sb on the healers.
No Surrender!

Ankhammon

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Not quite.  Heals don't work with hami's debuffs.  Your only hope is to get the regen to the cap and keep it there.  At the cap, even a blaster had a shot at surviving an attack by hami. Also, stay out of the splash range around the tank. 

When I was doing the tanking on my wp/ss tank, I'd sometime have to help the yellow agro team by holding yellow orb # 5 and 6 as well as the purple blob's agro.  It's possible but not easy.  You have to have 2 or more amazing healers keeping the regen buffs up plus a kin keeping sb on the healers.

Ah, I see now.

Ya know, this happy little accident (the whole Hamidon thing) may have been an unfinished/broken product by the devs but I think every game should have something like it.

Taking months to figure out and then putting together these huge groups to do it. Spending hours to take Hami down. Having to work together.
I think it had a part to play in how the CoH community formed into such a good group who helped one another.

Then again, I think ED did too by causing some rather "unbending" player types to leave. Maybe that's just me.
Cogito, Ergo... eh?

Posi Chimp

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I was in on the first Server-wide Hamidon raid on Champion. We had never taken it down and we spent days and weeks testing how it worked. I know our teams job - SG Sin - was to clear all the monster spawns. You see a few idiots decided it was fun to grief the attempt by herding monsters onto the healing blanket.

Yes, that was the wonderful Strykeforce SG doing the griefing.

They also griefed the reward part by grabbing as many HO drops as possible. This raid was the reason for the selection menu happening as having over 100 people never get a reward for the attempt - was beyond annoying. The griefing potential was terrible back in the day.

When was this?  I didn't get started on Hami raids on Champion until either issue 3 or 4.  A buddy whose toon was Regen Fayt held hami aggro with his kat/regen scrapper and helped me sort out the slotting issues I had with my dm/regen (Lucien J) who I ran aggro with until the supernerf.  The glory days of regen were among the most fun I had in the game.

JAT.MN

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I guess the best raid I ever joined was one where we had one of the defenders who happen to have taunt hold hami's agro.  A stone  tank stood by to take over if needed which he did during the part where the purple blob was being attacked.  The def help the agro otherwise just fine.  SuziePalmer was that defenders name, and she was an emp/something no less.  I think it blew everyone's mind watching that but with a group of emps behind her keeping the regen buffs going, she did it.

Even today I look back at that and think wow!

Not to raise this topic from the dead, but found it from a link on a wiki page.
I was at this raid on Pinnacle server or one of these raids. SuziePalmer was my SG mate at the time.. This was wayyyyyy pre-rouge release i think pre or slightly after COV launch even.. but yea.. SuziePalmer did that raid style a few times we were all on ventrilo at the time for some of them.

Sandolphan

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(from hazy memories)

Virtue Hamidon Raiding (the re-vamped Hami), late summer:

A core group of Angry Angels got together, first on the Test Server with the re-vamped Hami (with some fellow enthusiasts from other servers and BAB cheering us on) and later on Virtue once the re-vamp went live, to develop a strategy and then practice it.  First step was to determine if a yellow could be tanked (yes, an empath could keep a tank, later scrapper, alive on a yellow).  Then how many controllers to hold a green (four).  Could a tank be kept up taunting Hami?  (yes but the debuffs were debilitating, lots of regen and a second tank on hand for backup was best).

That was the info gaining phase.  We then set to practice coordination of the key roles: six yellow taunters with support, moving scrapper yellow-kill team, Hami taunter with support.  Once yellows were down, controls and damage on greens, ranged kill the blues, attack the hami nucleus and bloom all over again.

The Angry Angels leadership was very important on those first raids because we thought random community participants would have to feel that there was a successful method and outcome available.  Few would want to come just to practice and try 'stuff'.  Thus those first core team leaders had to know the strat and be able to lead effectively to allow any group of pickup players to join, have fun, and succeed.  We used fellow Angels as leaders at first because we knew each other and communicated exceedingly well.

We also wanted as many people as possible to learn to lead the teams and raid, so it would not just be dependent upon us.  From just a core group of 'seeds', many team and raid leaders sprouted.  Soon, there were lots of raids and Hamidon became a fun thing to do for anyone that wanted.

-----

We also did the first modified red-side hami strat, using Mastermind pet streaming instead of tanking.  It worked, but not well.  Mostly this was done to compensate for lack of empaths red-side, and also to give Masterminds something to do as the pets were otherwise not very useful.  Eventually, Brutes became strong enough to withstand Hami's attacks, so the pet stream strat rightfully faded away.

-----

There was also the nuke hami raid...

It was mid-January and I was thinking about ways to streamline our raid strat; nukes came to mind (pretty sure Ara put that thought in my head).  After a usual weekend raid, I announced to those gathered to go get each of the nukes over the week and we'd try a no-retreat nuke raid the following weekend (also posted on the Virtue forums).  People thought it sounded like fun, and that's what we were all about.

After our normal raid the next week, we spawned a second instance and the nukers gathered for it.  I'd worked out a sequence for using the various nukes (buff ourselves, debuff Hami, summon pets, attack, final damage nuke and push) and hotkeyed prepared instructions for them.  After a walk-thru rehearsal we dove in, cleared the mitos and gathered around the nucleus.  With everyone ready we started the sequence...

And I miscalculated the damage output of the pets during the summon/debuff phase.  The pets triggered the mitos before the debuffs had fully hit and we wiped under a double bloom.  Still, it showed it would work if I just re-timed the stages.  Told everyone to regather nukes and we'd try again next week.

Next week came, we staged and attacked.  All went incredibly smoothly as we killed Hami in under 2 mins, the entire raid taking under 10 mins total!

There was a video of it, but I no longer know where it is.  A great time was had by all though.  I'm not completely sure, but I think Dragonberry got the kill shot.

-----

Later, with the incarnate powers and the massively bigger enhancement builds, players became powerful enough to just do no-retreat raids, or even single-group.  But there was something quite enjoyable about doing it with our normal builds, against a foe that still could beat us handily, and with all those nukes raining down around us! ;)

« Last Edit: November 25, 2015, 08:23:35 AM by Sandolphan »

Dollmistress

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Hmm, let's see.

On Champion, I remember the controversial heroside Hami raid when Stryke-Force tried to take him down alone and was either griefed into failing or simply didn't have the firepower that day. Then later on the same night during the scheduled public raid, Stryke-Force's leader (Lord Stryker) appeared and griefed the raid. I seem to recall he wasn't successful, but I could be wrong.

Since I was much more of a redside player, I clearly recall the first ever villain Hami raids both on the test servers and Champion. I remember how on the very first test server attempt Hami was still set up with far too high a resist/defence, effectively making him unkillable. Everyone took out all the Mitos, then got annoyed at not being able to finish the job until after maintenance the next day (which of course also meant starting over from scratch).

The first Champion redside raid was hilarious, featuring more Masterminds than I can remember all spamming Hami with pets as cover, since the theory was Brutes wouldn't be about to tank Hami's damage. We took out a grand total of one Mito and declared victory, then Ghost Widow (one of the Devs logged in as her) in a red variation of her costume appeared to provide sympathy, but spoiled the effort when she showed off by wandering into the middle of Hami and back out again, declaring "I can't see what the problem is".

A few days later we had the first properly successful raid, and eventually learned how to win without even bothering to retreat during the blooms.

I preferred the old system though, since the dramatic team recall teleports were awesome and well timed action could often make the difference between winning and losing.

Oh and who can forget the fun way that jokers who got bored while standing around on the 'base rock' across from Hami could get just a little too close for comfort (the near edge of the rock was just inside Hami's aggro range) and snipe him, causing a horrific retaliation that could be very irritating to Masterminds who had just finished summoning and buffing their pets.

Now I'm remembering the fun level 52 Hami-O trick, where if you jumped into Warburg before claiming the Hamidon Enhancement it would be level 52 instead of 50.

More than anything else, being parts of a Hamidon raid really taught you the value of morale in a group situation. So many times raids could fail - even though the people involved had more than enough resources to win - simply because people got sick of waiting/dying/failing and left to go do something else.

chuckv3

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Wasn't there some group of 24 radiation controllers that took Hami out by just slipping beneath him (under the map) and using ennervating field x 24? I only heard about that, so who knows if it's true. I think this was pre-I9.

Canine

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I don't know how Noteworthy it is, but I was Hami tank on the first successful Union Hamidon, back in Issue 4.

It was the second successful EU raid as Vigilance (the french language server) got there first.

It was organised by Chaplain, an Emp/Rad(?)(vague memory time) defender.

Hami tank was me, on my Katana/regen scrapper, respecced into a perma Dull Pain, max passive regen build with Calling the Wolf slotted 2/2/2 for range, taunt duration and recharge.

Main raid targeting was an Invuln/SS tanker called Prize, everyone targeted through them, IIRC, to reduce random scattering of firepower.

There was much farming of Accolades prior to the raid, trying to get as many people as possible to have access to the Vanguard Medal.  (Many Rikti Monkeys died to bring us these accolades...)

There was a flying Phantasm dropping team, and all the usual 'state of the art' raid setups.

And it still took bloody ages.  (2 hours 10 minutes from timestamps on screenshots taken at beginning and end.)

Oh, I forgot, I also had a truly hideous hami-tank cossie (everyone was in skintights for lag reduction) that I kept for a few months afterwards to annoy the hell out of someone I was playing with at the time who objected vigorously to it :)

Gimme 5 mins, I may still have a screenshot of the cossie somewhere.

<time passes)

OK, so it took me 10 minutes to find the clearest one I had.



Tights with that pattern, and (of course) a bullseye on the chest, in case Hami needed any help on where to aim...

FeliciaDivine

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 Hi everyone, those from Champion server from 2007 until closing knows who I am...
 As a SF'er in 2007 I can testify to a few things....Lord Stryker was much maligned for his sg and teaming missions and TF's only stance...but he had a plan, stuck to it making 11 divisions make the top 20...about 8 of them were in the top 10...also holding the top 4 spots for the whole year...so I applaud him and the whole group!!!
 I left to form ALL-OUT-WAR which ended up just as successful.
 
 Now SF did zone control in Sirens Call successfully which annoyed everyone...only PoN and UHB could contest SF but did so unsuccessfully...

 SF held a Hami-Raid summer of 2007 where 48 members went in with nukes and set them all off at the same moment...for those who remember...this also shut down the server! This was a first and if I recall the only time this happened.

 Im glad so many people from Champion Server are posting here :)

OMG A PENGU!!!!!! You guys set soooo many records for fast or longest!!!!
2007 you guys were bored I saw you guys after you took 24 hours to do Synapse...THAT is endurance!!!

Also shout out to Lord Stryker (Stryke-Force), XBudxWieserX (Protectors of Neverland...yes you too Elfer-Elf Stalker), Steel Brigade (United Heroes Brigade) and Undead Cyborg (Hammers of Justice) and I should not forget Teh Artic the best PvPer
« Last Edit: November 24, 2015, 07:17:31 PM by FeliciaDivine »

FeliciaDivine

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 I was in 2 Pug Hami-Raids...one failed the other I rocked it with my Gravity/Empath...got the kill shot...
 I read that Hami was supposed to be mez resistant and someone said something about not being able to use targeted heals...I presume you meant the dark defender power where you siphon and transfer heals...but...
 I was there and tested it...as a dark defender or gravity empathy troller...everything worked on Hami...don't know if it is a glitch...but my spam holds and crushing gave me a huge edge...phase shift...I did not need to leave the area...
 Team a Dark Defender with a Gravity/Empath and you can sit the team under Hami indefinitely...
 
ALL-OUT-WAR Nov 15th 2008 at 6pm est did an SG Hami-Raid with only 16 members and completed it in 27 minutes...i'll try to see if I can post the video soon, it has been years. As far as I am aware this was the first time a 16 member team rocked it...in late 2010+ I saw other sg's doing it

 Addendum: at some point Hami and the villain bases in the pvp zones were changed to shoot phase shifted people but before that it was fun to phase shift into the villain base and wait for them :)
 Mmmmm now that I think of it...Incarnates made it easier to take on Hamidon so it would not be fair to compare the 2010+ teams to the under enhanced team I ran.
 I also see the other posters are talking about the first events when Hami came on...my posts should be regarded differently since the events were years later and Hami was slightly different. I consider Beta testers as pioneers...Angry Angels...you ROCK!
« Last Edit: November 28, 2015, 06:22:23 PM by FeliciaDivine »

Noyjitat

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Hazygreys lead a really fun 5 minute hamidon raid once on Liberty where we used all the warburg nukes on several characters. Hami died so fast it was amazingly hilarious.
I'll try to dig up a video of it that I put on my xfire profile.

I also lead my own hamiraid once on red side; which was cool considering nobody ever ran them on redside liberty. It was difficult though because Liberty being mostly a blueside server where we ran normal hero hamiraids very often. It took awhile to convince enough people to switch and login for it.

GOD I miss teaming with the people of Liberty. There's only been one other group of people I've had so much fun with and now they're both gone :(
« Last Edit: December 11, 2015, 04:23:07 AM by Noyjitat »

Ashen Fury

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I remember the early raids on justice where nobody had killed him yet and everyone was trying out all sorts of whacky strategies.
The one i loved most involved the entire raid standing on a hill out of range and having all of the defenders and blasters mass enhance range and spam snipes at things from a crazy distance. terribly ineffective, but still awesome to watch.
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Pickle

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I'm not sure this could truly be verified, though.
If memory serves, I think it was @pickle who was scanning her combat logs and noted that Hamidon got held for a brief moment. (Actually, I'm not even sure it was @pickle - it could just have been the character name.) On Liberty server, or so I was told, Hamidon Death Squad SG organized the first successful Hami-raid. I wasn't there - this was just something I was told. For some reason, I'm thinking Triumph may also deserve some mention. It may be that Liberty developed the strategy, but Triumph executed said strategy first. Either way, I'm only going off of second hand information.

It has been a long time since I have been on any forum, but this topic stirred a few great memories.

First a little background on the whole "Liberty Server Open Sourcing" of Hami raids.

Just after the addition of capes and auras--Issue 2 I believe--I left my SG "Front Line" to join the Hamidon Death Squad.  Upon announcement of the formation of this SG with one dedicated purpose, there were literally hundreds of join requests. 

See, a few months before, 2 SGs on other servers had proof of defeating Hamidon.  One was on Pinnacle I believe (whichever one was considered the "drunk server")--JaggedLegion. 

There was another (cant remember who or which server), but they were rather arrogant and flaunted their Hamidon enhancements in the forums.  A screenshot of their raid showed an excessive amount of Radiation powers...almost completely controllers and defenders.  On Liberty at the time, a huge influx of Radiation defenders was rolled based on this.  In fact, the HDS' de facto leader "Retro Knight" rolled from a scrapper to a defender named "Bio Infection".  Here's how we figured the unknown SG used radiation to beat Hamidon: a well known radiation infection power bug and a bug with snipe.  You used to be able to cast Radiation Infection on a group of mobs who would immediately aggro to you.  You could run in a building like an enhancement store with this toggle on and the mobs would sit at the entrance waiting for you to come out.  It was particularly fun for griefing Steel Canyon for all the lowbies trying to sell off the enhancements they got in Steel Canyon from the Positron TF.  IIRC, Phase shift also used to let you use a power, toggle phase shift, and the power was still active.  So our belief was that many of their SG did that and hid behind a boulder with Radiation Infection active.  Now for snipe.  You could jump up from a boulder, target a mito, then jump again and set the power off. The animation would play and the snipe would go off, but you'd be safely behind a boulder.  Imagine 20+ SG members doing this and you can understand why their raids took hours.  But it did work until the devs nerfed the RI rnge problem.

As for Jagged Legion, they posted a video of their raid, but not their secret.  Upon watching the video over and over, I noticed that in their Hami battle scene, Hami was not attacking.  Also, Animated Stone was running around, Singularities were out all over the place, controller powers, etc.  So we came to the conclusion that the mez threshold was broken.

After one failed raid, I did see a combat notification that said Hamidon has been overcome with Cinders.  In retrospect, it just may have been a canned message, but we all took that to mean that we should permahold Hami.  First we had to overcome the damage from mitos and Hami--we did this on previous raids by using the heal bubble tactic--constant aoe heals, constant rezzes.  We also had a taunt team (Miss Snips generally for most of the failed and successful first raids).  Snips was a regen/claws scrapper, stacked with regen buffs and speedboost along with a heavily slotted taunt.  Snips held aggro while we all stacked mezzes.  Snips would tell us when hai was no longer attacking.  When Hami was held for 2 minutes or so it was damage dealer time. Absolute Chaos!

Some notes on the early raids.

This was slightly before the Council of War issue and I remember being annoyed that useful archetypes were playing alts to do the Striga content.  Also, I went from zone to zone spamming the upcoming raid.  We didnt have global chat back then.  It was pretty embarassing...

We got really efficient with using group fly and phantom army to hold aaggro while we swept mitos.  I found it ridiculous that 20 tanks could be taunting a mito or hami but one Phantom Army drew all of the attention.

Kinetics were awesome to spam the superjump power.  Scrappers loved em.

We asked people to turn off capes and auras.  In fact we encouraged people to wear simple costumes.  A t shirt and jeans perhaps.  HDS chose to wear Black suits with Red trim.  Capes and auras lagged out a lot of players--there were hundreds in the zone at a time and it wasnt uncommon to go link dead from all of the effects.  In fact, I went link dead on the first succesfull Hami raid just after he exploded.

In the early raids, all you needed to do to get a hami was to kill the mini mito things that spawned after Hami died.  The more you damaged, the more HOs you could get.  Retro used to spam a warning to delete all of your inventory before Hami died so that we could get as many as possible.  I always filled a tray at the early raids.

A controller on Triumph named Tremere apparently came up with the permahold idea at about the same time, though we knew nothing about it and their raids were not sucessful until the open sourcing.  He and I maintained a bitter forum manner towards each other ever since.

The open sourcing was performed "tabloid reporter style" by a scrapper named Delivery Man.  It annoyed most of us since he basically dropped it to everybody while we were in the process of listing out the strategy.  Deliveryman subsequently deleted his character--most likely rerolled--and was never heard from again.

Most servers had one of two attitudes about our strategy: they were thankful or they called our method "ham-fisted". The truth is they all took the strat and ran with it.  Hami raids schedules were posted in every server forum.  They even took HDS' announcement and changed a few words to make it their own.

My initial idea was to get a zone full of mind controllers and have them confuse a nearby monster named Stropharia--a mushroom monster.  It had untyped damage and I thought that was the devs Key to defeating Hamidon.  With a confused monster, and through the mass use of telekinesis, I was confident that the monster could be pushed into Hamidon and destroy it with the untyped damage.  I never got around to doing that.  Nobody rolled a mind controller back then.

HDS believed that with the farming of Hamidon spread to all servers, we were forcing the Devs to create a higher level cap with new content and different enhancements.  But what happened was the next issue was Coliseum, and on the test server, PVPers with Hami enhancements absolutely shredded their opponents.  The devs responded at that time with Enhancement Diversification. So indirectly, I felt like I helped break the game  :(

HDS was effectively disbanded by Issue 5.  People's interest in a Hami raid began to wane due to the oversaturation of raids.

One of the devs did spill the beans oh how they meant for the raid to take place.  Basically as we had done, yet at key points in Hami's health, everyone but one person ran out of the "goo".  This only spawned one mito to be killed and Hami could be worked again.  It was supposed to happen 3 times before he died.  Once at 50 %, once at 25%, and once at 10% health.

I am sure I am forgetting something but thanks for letting me spout off what I remember on the Liberty Raids.